India's top court allows gov't to introduce African cheetah to suitable habitat in country

09:21, January 29, 2020

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  Battle for India’s new citizenship law moves to top court

  Indian Union Muslim League leader P.K.Kunhalikutty, center, one of the petitioners, speaks to media on the lawns of Indias Supreme Court after the top court started hearing dozens of petitions that seek revocation of a new citizenship law amendment in New Delhi, India. (Photo: AP)India’s top court on Wednesday began hearing dozens of petitions seeking the revocation of amendments to the citizenship law following nationwide protests and a security crackdown that led to more than 20 deaths.The Supreme Court would not grant a stay before hearing from the government, which has argued the law is a humanitarian gesture allowing citizenship for people fleeing religious persecution in Muslim-majority Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.Chief Justice Sharad Arvind Bobde, the head of a three-judge panel, told the courtroom he will make a decision in four weeks after the government has replied to all of the petitions. He also asked a larger, five-judge constitutional panel to take part in the decision.The law Parliament approved in December sparked vehement opposition. Protesters, political opponents and constitutional lawyers have said it is discriminatory because it excludes Muslims.The nationwide protests numbering in the tens of thousands appear to be the fiercest public criticism Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist-led government has faced.Modi’s party has downplayed the protests as orchestrated by political opponents. His powerful Home Minister Amit Shah said the government will not retreat on the law.“Those who want to protest may continue doing so,” Shah said Tuesday at a public rally in Lucknow.Most of the petitions argue that by excluding Muslims, the law undermines the first sentence of the preamble to the Indian Constitution, which defines the country as secular, and violates Article 14, which guarantees equality before the law.“We believe the court will certainly take into consideration the views expressed by all these sections of people, and th...

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  US Supreme Court allows enforcement of new green card rule

  A divided Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to put in place new rules that could jeopardize permanent resident status for immigrants who use food stamps, Medicaid and housing vouchers.Under the new policy, immigration officials can deny green cards to legal immigrants over their use of public benefits.File photo: CGTNThe justices order came by a 5-4 vote and reversed a ruling from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York that had kept in place a nationwide hold on the policy following lawsuits against it.The courts four liberal justices, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, voted to prevent the policy from taking effect.Federal appeals courts in San Francisco and Richmond, Virginia, had previously overturned trial court rulings against the rules. An injunction in Illinois remains in effect but applies only to that state.The lawsuits will continue, but immigrants applying for permanent residency must now show they wouldnt be public charges, or burdens to the country.The new policy significantly expands what factors would be considered to make that determination, and if it is decided that immigrants could potentially become public charges later, that legal residency could be denied. Under the old rules, people who used non-cash benefits, including food stamps and Medicaid, were not considered public charges.“The public charge rule is the latest attack in the Trump administration’s war on immigrants," said Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration expert at Cornell Universitys law school. "It makes it harder for working class people to immigrate to or stay in the United States. This rule is another brick in the invisible wall this administration is building to curb legal immigration."Roughly 544,000 people apply for green cards annually. According to the government, 382,000 are in categories that would make them subject to the new review.Immigrants make up a small portion of th...

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  S. African president pledges to promote economic empowerment of African women

  CAPE TOWN, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- President Cyril Ramaphosa pledged on Monday to use South Africas chairmanship of the African Union (AU) to promote the economic empowerment of African women.South Africas President Cyril Ramaphosa (File photo: AFP)At the end of the week, Ramaphosa will travel to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for an AU summit at which South Africa will assume chairmanship of the continental organization for the next year."We plan to use this great responsibility, among other things, to promote the economic empowerment of the women of Africa," Ramaphosa said in his weekly address.With the African Continental Free Trade Area coming into operation this year, Africa has an opportunity to ensure that women and women-owned businesses be able to meaningfully benefit from what will be the worlds largest common market for goods and services, the president said."There has never been a better time to do so," he added.Just as there can be no real gender equality without economic emancipation for women, so too there can be no sustainable economic growth for any country unless women are full and equal participants, said Ramaphosa.South Africas chairmanship of the AU coincides with the end of the African Womens Decade and the 25th anniversary of the landmark World Conference on Women, where United Nations member countries adopted the far-reaching Beijing Platform for Action toward greater equality and opportunity for women.This is an opportunity for African countries to gauge the progress they have made to protect the fundamental freedoms of women, Ramaphosa said."It is also an opportunity to measure just how far we have come and what more needs to be done to broaden the economic participation of women," he added.Ramaphosa stressed the need to acknowledge, for example, that the principle of equal pay for equal work is still not consistently applied.Womens participation in certain industries, especially in scien...